If You Loved Me
by nllyoung
Summary: "I remember everything about that day as if it was yesterday. I relive it my dreams, in my thoughts, in my heart. I didn't know that that feeling of hollowness and loneliness would accompany me forever, till these days." After three years since he has disappeared, something is found. Rated M for major character death.


**Hey there! This is nllyoung again - and with a new story!**

 **I know I still have to complete Secrets to Sell and that I haven't updated in a while... and I apologize to you! I've been through a lot, between school and my family problems, and I had no time to write even a single word. The good news is that school has ended and it's summer time! So, I will have more time to update STS and start this new fic I've been thinking about for a while, now.**

 **This was inspired by a bunch of songs on my playlist:**

 **-Photograph, Ed Sheeran**

 **-Hotel Ceiling, Rixton**

 **-Someone like you, Adele**

 **-Miss America, James Blunt**

 **-Skinny love, Bon Iver**

 **But most of all... All I want, Kodaline! Infact, the title was inspired by this one. You will find some similarities with Lovely Bones, but after all, it's one of my favourite books. I apologize for incoming grammar mistakes.**

 **This story will be a little angst and dark, but I promise it will be worth it! It's rated M for major character death and some explicit scenes here and there. There will be a little of Everthorne, but don't worry, I've everlarked enough to know that I can't possibly end a story with Katniss and Gale together. This will be a little different, though.**

 **I hope I've intrigued you enough!**

 **Till chapter 2, nllyoung.**

* * *

 ** _If you loved me_ _  
_**

It gets colder and colder as I start breathing back to a normal pace. The light nightgown that hugs my skinny body is not even close to what I should wear right now. It's not seven yet, and the alarm hasn't gone off. But as I come back to myself, I see the light pink that colors the sky: the sunrise.  
I've found myself on the floor a couple of minutes ago, and I notice just now that I'm laying on the orange carpet that was once his favourite. We were just newlyweds and still young for a marriage, but it never crossed my mind that we could have been too naive for such thing. At the age of twentyone, we were far from innocent.  
That carpet caught my attention one afternoon, while we were out for a couple of commissions. At the time, we were still sleepimg on the floor with covers and pillows as a bed. We never complained, though. We had very little sleep that week.  
The carpet was colored in a light orange, just like the sunset. He saw it, too, and when he threw at me a wide smile, I went to pay for the other things, while he bought the carpet. It was one of my favourite things about our marriage: we could speak without actually open our mouths.

I pass my hand on the silky surface and sigh before getting up.

I get dressed in a white pullover and blue jeans, and I sit on the bed as I get into my boots. As I walk past our wedding photo hanging from the wall, I get into the kitchen. I try as hard as I can not to think about his smile on that day. With one hand I switch the television on and with the other I start the coffee machine. It was his wedding present for me: he did know how unbearable I could get without my morning coffee, after all. The local news is on, and the voice of the journalist makes me want to punch her in the face. High and dripping with fake excitement. She talks about some new shopping center for a good ten minutes' time.  
I cook eggs and bacon, like he always did for me after we made love. I would watch his back and his shoulder blades as he moved around the kitchen, humming to himself. I wonder what would he say if he saw me right now, messy hair and morning breath trying to remember what I lost.  
"You're beautiful, love." he would whisper in my hair before kissing my cheek. He would sit beside me, hold my hand as we eat our breakfast, my smile never leaving my face. I imagine reaching out on the table to grab his hand, but stop myself before I really go insane. My greatest fear is that someone is watching me and at the first clue of a mental illness, I will brought away from our house.  
But now I just try to relive those memories: the feeling of his hands on my belly as he kissed me, leaving me breathless. The way his eyes would shine everytime he saw my face in the morning, right there on his chest. The little scar he had behind his right knee from a bad fall when he was five.

All these things, intimate and close to me, are only in my memories now. No one could understand how lost I would be without them. They are the only bridge I have to sanity, and the only ones that can make me smile.

A smell of burning eggs wakes me up from my daydreaming. This happenes more often than I would like it to. I manage to eat some bacon as I notice the newspaper on the table. I wonder how couldn't I have seen it before. I can smell Gale's cologne between the pages. He never left my side, even after I signed the divorce papers and cried on his shoulder repeating how sorry I was. I know he still loves me, but he understands that it all happened at the wrong time. For one thing I can thank Gale: he made me see why I couldn't end it all. To this day, I'm still grateful for his friendship.  
A thought shakes me out from my thinking as my eyes fall on the calendar on the wall in front of me. In three days, it will be our fifth anniversary – mine and Peeta's. How I wish he would be there with me.

I'm washing the dishes from yesterday's dinner when the annoying voice of the journalist on the news makes my blood freeze in my veins.  
"...From the District 12 Police Department, there are news about Peeta Mellark's disappearance. As most on the county knows, Mr. Mellark was twentytwo when, in the morning of the 9th of July of three years ago, he disappeared mysteriously. The case was left in the hands of Policemen Havensbee and Abernathy, two dear friends of the man.  
"In the late afternoon of two days ago, a green sweatshirt was found in the District 12 woods, two miles from his house in which he lived with his wife, Katniss Mellark. The police has immediately examinated the clue and this morning it has been confirmed to be his."  
My heart stops. I can't hear anything but the blood warming my ears, making it impossible to even feel my heart. It's like I fell from Mars, feeling every single inch of air disappearing from my lungs. I don't know I'm crying until I feel a tear falling on my feat. I sit on the floor for what feels like and eternity, but I can't move.

I stopped hoping for his return a long time ago. Something inside my mind was always telling me that he left because of me, because I didn't want children, and because I didn't express my love as often as he did. I knew it didn't matter to him, but without other reasons to believe otherwise, I started feeling like the reason why he left me. But in the end, he didn't have a reason to leave like that.

Now I know, I know why he never came back.

I think I've always known it, and that's why I married Gale. But some part of me, the one that was still in love with him like the first time he kissed me, was still hoping.  
I don't wash my face or even get some make up on as I start the car and head to the Police Department.

* * *

Effie's smile quickly falls as I walk towards her cubicle.  
"Effie, I need to speak to Haymitch." I demand.  
She nods, passing a hand through her long blonde curls, and alerts Haymitch through the phone. She lets me go inside his office.  
When I enter, he quickly sits up from his chair and walks towards me, his lips moving. But before he can say anything, I shut him up.  
"What the fuck were you thinking?" I yell at him. I know it's not really his fault if I didn't know anything until a Capitol journalist told the whole District of the news. But I don't know who to blame, right now.

Haymitch knows it, too.

"Are you insane? Why would no one tell me?" I continue, "I had to hear it from a fucking blonde journalist on the TV, Haymitch!"  
"I know, sweetheart, I know!" he yells higher to make me hear his excuses. "I know! I didn't know what to do, but I knew I couldn't tell you something that wasn't true if that wouldn't have been Peeta's sweatshirt. I took it to the lab as soon as they left it to me. I've known for a little over two hours! The fucking Capitol news heard something and they came here this morning. I didn't say anything, I don't know who did, but I would have told you today." he takes a deep breath. "I'm sorry."

I'm at a loss of words. I notice my wet eyes and the tears that are streaming down my face. A sob breaks through me, and Haymitch takes me in an embrance. I cry desperately in his chest, smacking and punching it. I'm angry, tired and sad. I don't know how I should feel right now, but I know I just want Peeta's arms instead of Haymitch's. This thought makes me cry harder, though.

"Sweetheart, I'm sorry." he whispers in my hair, "I hate to see you like this."

We stay like that for what I think are hours, and then he makes me drink some water while sitting in his chair. I don't speak or move or really try to do anything as he concentrates on finding the right words to say. For how much I would like to negate it, he and I are very alike. It's not easy to express our feelings through words for us.

At some point, he starts walking around his office. I think his hands are slightly shaking.

"Katniss," he starts, "I'm going to tell this as a police officer, but you know I won't let you go without telling you what is my opinion as a friend." I simply stare at him. My head is not clear enough to process his words right now. "Two days ago, a woman came here and asked for an officer. Effie let me know and I came to see her. From what she told me, she was jogging when she decided to go for a stop near the lake near the woods."

The lake. _Our_ lake. The lake in which he asked me to marry him, where we shared kisses and caresses. The lake my father showed me when I was little. I didn't think it would have been a stop for a jogger.

"Well, she found the sweatshirt on a rock on the shore. She thought it was of a swimmer or of someone who left it there temporarily," he takes a deep breath before speaking again, "but then she noticed it was covered in blood." My breath catches in my lungs. "Peeta's blood."

I don't want to cry. I've already wasted too many tears for one day, but when his name and the word "blood" leave Haymitch's mouth in the same sentence, the tears start flooding on my cheeks, without any control or my will. The realization finally sinks in, and now my body lets me fall as I wished so many times before, when I had first lost any sort of hope.

"I had already known the sweatshirt was his at first look, but when Beetee confirmed it from the lab…" he trails off, his eyes starting to water up. I've never seen Haymitch cry. I've always thought of him as the most steady and unsentimental person in the world, and seeing his grey eyes turning into a river of tears, makes me lose any kind of hope to be able to regain some control in my life. Because, after all, you have to be though if you want to survive.

But Haymitch hasn't finished yet. "I wanted to tell you, I swear. But you were just starting to get back to us and I didn't want to shock you again. I didn't want a repeat of last time."

I look into his eyes and see a comforting feeling seeing the exact shade of grey reflected. "I'm… sorry…" I manage to get out, but he scoots me up in his arms.

"Don't, sweetheart. It wasn't your fault." he whispers in my hair.

"Haymitch, what do you think?" I ask.

"I know you probably have already an idea about this story, but I promise I will try anything that is in my possession to find out what has happened to him." he says.

I don't want to hear false hope anymore. "Tell me, please." I plead in his chest.

He pulls away to look in my eyes. "There was so much blood on that sweatshirt… I don't think he had the strength to take it off with a wound like that."

"So you think…"

"I think he was murdered."

* * *

 _A feeling of warmness runs through me as he opens his blue eyes._

 _I've been up for ten minutes when he wakes up. My head has been on his chest for the whole night and when his eyes open, I'm directly watching them. For a second, the air seems not to be enough in my lungs._

" _Morning, sleepyhead." I gently greet him. His grin matches mine as he stirs._

" _Morning, love."_

 _I change position, so that I'm on top of him, straddling his lap. He grabs me from the hips and I lean down to kiss him gently._

" _What are you up to today?" I say brushing my lips to his._

" _Nothing without you, my love." Suddenly, he switches our position so that I'm under him. I start laughing when he tickles my neck. I can feel his smile against my skin as he presses light kisses all over my body. He takes my nightgown off and starts kissing my breasts. A low moan escapes my mouth and I try to stifle a laugh as he watches my reaction, with now wide open blue eyes and messy blond hair. He returns to my lips, kissing me deeply. I let out a shaky breath as we pull apart: even after all this time, his kisses make me shiver as if they were our first ones. But I guess it's like that – love._

 _We kiss again as he massages my left breast and I draw circles on his back. I feel his fingers teasing me at the waistband of my panties, then he pulls one finger inside me. I let out a deep moan._

" _Are you sure you have nowhere to go today?" I ask breathless, "Because I might keep you all to myself…"_

" _I would love you to." he says between biting and kissing my neck. I feel I'm reaching the edge already._

" _Peeta…"_

" _I know, love," he whispers, "let go."_

 _I do._

 _He wraps his arms around me and kiss my hair as my breathing return to its steadiness._

" _Really… do you have anywhere to go?" I ask again. I'm seriously thinking of keeping him in bed all day._

 _He sighs. "Haymitch is expecting me at the central at two o'clock and I thought of working out a bit before that." he says. He passes his fingers through my hair. I know how important it is for him to train with Haymitch. Since the age of four, Peeta's dream has always been to become a policeman._

 _I turn around and smile at him. "As long as you come back to me at the end of the day." I whisper._

" _I promise." he replies softly._

* * *

 _Usually, Haymitch and Peeta train together twice a week. Peeta has studied Law and Justice when he was at college in West Virginia, and in the meantime, I've waited here with Haymitch for his return._

 _We met during our senior year in high school when he had just moved in. He came with his parents and his two brothers one afternoon at my door to meet the neighbors, and from that moment we were inseparable. We have always been together ever since._

 _When college time came, he decided to go back to his hometown, Morgantown, to study. I stayed here in Panem._

 _I had nowhere to go, really. I've always lived here with my family, and I had never planned to go away. I had lived alone with my dad for ten years and I had never thought of anywhere else._

 _My mom and my little sister died in a car accident when I was only eleven. I watched my father turn into a ghost. When the social service came to our door, he finally woke up._

 _I have never had time to think about my losses and when finally he was taking care of me, I released every single tear I had kept to myself. When Peeta came around, I was as happy as I could be on my own. He made me see, feel and say things I've never thought I would experience in my life. My dad's approval was a blessing and the only thing that was taking me aback from marrying Peeta._

 _Today I feel as lonely as I did when he went away to college. My dad kept me company during the morning, before he had to go to work, and Haymitch in the evening, when he got off of work. They were my life-saviors in those days._

 _The only thing that's keeping me together is the thought that he will come back in the evening, make me smile and laugh and maybe make love to me in our bed._

 _I'm doing the ironing and singing to myself as the chicken cooks in the kitchen._

" _Your pain and your hunger, they're driving you home…"_

 _I didn't even hear the phone ringing until I have to stop singing to recatch my breath._

" _Hello?" I ask._

" _Hi sweetheart, it's Haymitch."_

" _Hey, what's up?" I glance at the clock hanging from the wall: it's three o' clock, "Shouldn't you be with Peeta?"_

" _Yeah, I was going to ask you 'bout that." he replies, "I've been waiting for over an hour. I thought maybe you were keeping him busy." he says with a chuckle._

 _The smile automatically forms on my lips just thinking about this morning. "Well, no. He left about two hours ago to work out before your meeting. He said you were expecting him at two o'clock."_

" _Exactly. I tried to call him, but it goes straight to the voicemail."_

 _My breath catches in my lungs._

* * *

 **Already working on chapter 2!**


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